Sinful

by Joan Johnston

  Eve was down on one knee and had both children in her arms. Her eyes were brimmed with tears and her chin was wobbling as she tried to smile at them. She rose, the children still clinging to her, and swiped at a tear that spilled over. She shot a woeful look at him and said, “I’ll get out of your way. I was just leaving.”

  She’d only taken one step before Brooke gripped her at the waist on one side and Sawyer wrapped his arms around her hip on the other. Both children were crying. She shut her eyes and caught her lower lip in her teeth as she put a loving hand on each child’s head.

  “Please don’t leave us, Aunt Eve,” Brooke begged. “Please!”

  Sawyer looked up at her, tears streaming, his nose running, and cried, “Don’t go! Don’t go! Don’t go!”

  Eve shot Connor an imploring look. “I know I shouldn’t be here. But I wanted to say goodbye to the children before you take them away.”

  He suddenly realized that Eve must be afraid that she was no more likely to see the children on a regular basis in the future than Mr. and Mrs. Robertson were. He shifted his gaze to his children, who were clearly anxious. This would be the first time they’d been alone with him in the nine months since Molly’s death. He’d spent a few hours of court-ordered time with them each week over the past two months since he’d been home, but it had been at a neutral location, supervised by a social worker, and they’d known their grandparents would be coming to get them again. Now he was scooping them up and taking them somewhere strange, without any of the people who’d been their anchors since Molly’s death.

  He could feel his heart racing as adrenaline flowed into his system, much as it always had before combat. He recognized it as a response to the sudden fear he felt. Could he raise two happy, healthy children all by himself? He was about to face the biggest challenge of his life—and the most important one. He took a deep, calming breath and said, “Brooke, Sawyer, it’s time for us to go home.”

  As he stepped toward them, they clung more tightly to Eve.

  “Where’s Nana and Bampa?” Brooke asked.

  Connor didn’t want to lie and tell his daughter she’d be seeing her grandparents soon. But he recognized the stark fear in her eyes at the thought of losing someone else from her life. “They’re still in the courtroom. Right now you and Sawyer need to come with me.”

  “Can you come, too, Aunt Eve?” Brooke asked.

  “No, I—”

  “Of course she can.” Connor met Eve’s gaze over the kids’ heads and added, “She can help you get into your car seats.”

  Connor’s heart was in his throat until Eve nodded. She favored each child with a sweet smile. “You’re going to have a wonderful time with your daddy.”

  Connor handed the paperwork to the social worker, then collected the kids’ bags and carried them out the door. Eve followed behind him, a child’s hand in each of hers. What would he have done if she hadn’t been there? Connor had visions of a scene that would have had everyone in the courthouse running to see what all the commotion was about and the judge changing his mind and giving the kids back to Molly’s parents.

  He shot a grateful look at Eve over his shoulder as he headed for his truck. He could see she was talking to the kids but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He threw the bags into the back of the pickup and opened the backseat door. He reached to pick up Sawyer, worried that the boy might shrink from him. To his surprise, Sawyer reached up both hands and gripped him around the neck.

  Connor resisted the urge to hug the boy tighter. Instead, he enjoyed the few moments of holding his son’s slight weight in his arms, of smelling his little boy’s hair and brushing it back from his forehead. Then he settled him in the car seat he’d put in that morning and attached the belts.

  By the time he was done, he saw that Eve had coaxed Brooke into her car seat and was attaching the belts that would keep her safe. She whispered something in his daughter’s ear as Brooke looked at him with wide eyes. Then Eve stepped back and closed the door.

  Connor came running around the truck to catch her before she could leave. “Thank you. I don’t think that would have gone nearly as well if you hadn’t been here.” That was the understatement of the century.

  “I’m glad I could help.”

  “What did you say to get them to come with me?”

  She looked into his eyes and said, “I told them you were their mother’s most favorite person in the whole world and that Molly would want them to go with you and be as good as good can be to show what wonderful children she’d raised.”

  Connor didn’t speak, because a lump the size of a grenade was clogging his throat. He merely nodded, glanced at the two children calmly looking back at him, then got inside and started the truck.

  Chapter 4

  EVE HAD MANAGED to avoid her father at the courthouse, but when she arrived in the dining room at Kingdom Come for supper, he was already seated at the head of the table. Taylor and Victoria were out of town, but Matt’s family was there, along with Leah. Eve had barely settled the cloth napkin in her lap when King said, “What bee got into your bonnet this morning at the courthouse? Why did you tell the judge that Molly wanted the kids to go to that Flynn boy?”

  “Did you want me to lie?” Eve retorted.

  Leah leaned across Eve to set a bowl of mashed potatoes in the center of the table, where she’d already set a platter of fried chicken and a bowl of string beans. “You know Eve and Molly were best friends. She had to tell what she knew.”

  “Phil and Helen Robertson are devastated,” King said, glaring at Eve.

  “How do you think Connor felt when he came home from the war and Molly’s parents wouldn’t give him back his children?” Eve countered.

  “I told you the friendship between those two girls was a bad idea,” he said to Leah.

  “Molly was a nice girl from a good family. There was no reason to keep Eve away from her.”

  “The Robertsons and Flynns were always thick as fleas on a barn cat,” King muttered.

  “That didn’t happen until after Molly married Connor,” Leah reminded him.

  Eve had been almost grown before it dawned on her just how much responsibility her father had placed on his stepdaughter’s shoulders. She’d resented and defied Leah’s admonitions to behave. Eve had been the odd sister out, since her twin sisters did everything together, but she hadn’t bonded with Leah, either. It was Molly who’d held the role of beloved sister. Leah had been an authority figure to be obeyed. Or, more often, disobeyed.

  With the benefit of hindsight, Eve was glad and grateful that Leah had been there all the years she was growing up. Leah was a bulwark against which her father could not stand, probably because Leah never asked for anything for herself. Her eldest sister thought of everyone else first and herself a long way after. If anyone deserved to stay at Kingdom Come, it was Leah, but she was being thrown out right along with the rest of them.

  Eve shot an aggrieved look toward the other end of the pine trestle table, where Matt sat flanked by his daughter, Pippa, and his son, Nathan. Pippa had gray eyes and flyaway, sun-streaked chestnut hair. She was undeniably beautiful, nearly six feet tall with a willowy figure. Nathan was a miniature of his father, with sapphire-blue eyes and black hair. The boy was small for his age and had a limp, but Eve had heard no explanation of how he’d gotten it.

  There were secrets to be discovered, she was sure, about Matt’s beautiful daughter and his limping son, starting with the reason for the fourteen-year gap between their ages. Eve wondered what had happened to Matt’s wife. Or was it wives? Like father, like son? Matt hadn’t volunteered any information, and both he and his children had remained tight-lipped about their existence before they’d shown up in Wyoming.

  Not that anyone was asking. She and her sisters had treated Matt and his family like the interlopers they were, doing their best to make them feel unwelcome.

  That hadn’t been as easy as it sounded. Victoria had come up with the idea of eating breakfa
st when it was still dark out and leaving cold eggs and bacon on the table for their half brother and his family to eat when they got up at a reasonable hour. Unfortunately, by the time the girls made their bleary-eyed, crack-of-dawn appearance in the kitchen, Matt had already eaten his breakfast and taken off for parts unknown. Pippa never showed up for breakfast at all. And Nathan announced he liked cold eggs and bacon.

  Leah quickly nipped that sort of petty behavior in the bud. She suggested that Eve and her sisters confront Matt directly to get the concessions she was sure he’d be willing to make, considering the fact that they were related. But that wasn’t as easy as it sounded, either.

  The first Saturday after Matt arrived, Eve showed up at the stable with her twin sisters to take a morning ride and caught Matt saddling Taylor’s favorite mount for himself.

  “That’s my horse,” Taylor said.

  Matt lowered the stirrup that he’d apparently adjusted for his longer leg. He stroked the Appaloosa’s neck and said, “He’s a good-looking animal.”

  “You’ll need to find yourself another mount,” Taylor continued as she grabbed the reins, which were knotted and slung over the western saddle horn, near the bit. “Steeldust is mine.”

  Eve watched several emotions flicker across Matt’s face as he made the decision whether to concede the issue or contest it. There were plenty of saddle horses in the barn. While Steeldust was Taylor’s favorite mount, the gelding was by no means the only horse she rode.

  “You’ll have to get yourself another horse,” Matt said at last. “I’ve got somewhere I need to be.” Rather than stay on the ground where they were on equal footing, so to speak, he threw himself into the saddle without using the stirrups, a graceful move that spoke of how many times he must have done it.

  Before he could kick his mount into action, Taylor applied pressure on the bit, holding Steeldust in place.

  “You’re not going anywhere on my horse.”

  Instead of spurring the horse so the reins would be jerked from Taylor’s hands, Matt relaxed in the saddle, crossing his wrists over the horn. “We need to get a few things straight.”

  Eve bristled at Matt’s tone, while Victoria’s mouth thinned to a furious line. Taylor’s whole body snapped upright, as though Matt had slapped her.

  “No, you need to get a few things straight,” Taylor said through gritted teeth. “You left. You walked away. You can’t come back now and play cock of the walk.”

  “I agreed to come back to the ranch on one condition.”

  Eve waited for Matt to name that condition. He waited for one of them to ask.

  “What condition?” Victoria said at last.

  “I’m the boss.”

  “You’re not the boss of me!” Taylor snapped.

  Eve cringed at Taylor’s use of an expression they’d tossed back and forth when they were little, however much it fit the situation.

  “Take it up with Dad,” Matt said.

  Taylor’s face bleached white at the reminder that Matt was as much one of King’s kids as they were. He seemed sure King would tell them that he had, in fact, put Matt in charge.

  But they hadn’t been named King’s Brats for nothing. Taylor let go of the reins and took a step back. She glared at Matt and said, “This isn’t over.”

  Matt’s eyes narrowed as he nodded at each of them in turn, daring them to do their worst. Then he kicked Steeldust into a lope and rode away.

  Matt hadn’t conceded a thing. Not only that, he’d refused to be drawn into an argument. He’d never raised his voice, and he hadn’t given an inch. It was infuriating behavior for Eve and her sisters, who were used to raging arguments with their father. It was impossible to win a battle, let alone the war, when the damned man refused to fight!

  “I’m going to make you sorry you ever left Australia,” Taylor muttered at Matt’s back.

  They spent every minute of their ride seeking a way to oust Matt from Kingdom Come, but it was hard to know how to get rid of him when they didn’t know why he’d shown up in the first place.

  Now, three weeks after his arrival, Matt was as much an enigma as he’d been on the day he’d arrived. But every day he was at Kingdom Come, he insinuated himself and his family more deeply into the fabric of life on the ranch.

  Eve noticed that Matt’s six-year-old son was gnawing on a chicken leg with relish, while his twenty-year-old daughter pushed her mashed potatoes around the plate without taking a bite. Pippa didn’t look happy to be here, which Eve could understand. It would be difficult for any young woman to leave her friends behind and move to a strange place, and Matt had taken his kids halfway around the world.

  Apparently Pippa hadn’t been in college, or if she had, she’d agreed to leave in midterm to come here with her father. Eve would have dearly loved to be a fly on the wall during that conversation. She wondered why the nearly grown girl had agreed to come, if she was so unhappy to be here.

  At least Matt wanted his kids with him, which was more than she could say for her father. King had found plenty of reasons to be somewhere other than at home for most of her life, leaving her and her sisters behind to be supervised by Leah, a housekeeper, and a couple of hired hands.

  Eve had never considered just how much Leah must have given up to be their surrogate mother until she overheard her sister arguing with King in his study the same night he announced his deal with Matt. Who could not, when both were shouting at the top of their lungs?

  “It’s not fair!” Leah cried. “You can’t do this to the girls, King. This is their home.”

  Likely because Leah had come into the family as a five-year-old, she’d always called her stepfather “King,” but Eve knew her father respected Leah and loved her like a daughter, which was to say, as much as he was capable of loving anyone.

  “I had to offer Matt something to get him home,” her father replied.

  Eve heard a scornful laugh before Leah said, “It was a lot more than something. You gave him everything!”

  “I wanted him back here.”

  “Why?”

  The word hung in the air for a long time before King said, “I made some mistakes. I’m trying to atone for them.”

  As their voices quieted, Eve moved closer to the door to hear better.

  To her astonishment, noble, selfless Leah said, “Where am I supposed to go, Daddy? What am I supposed to do?”

  Eve’s stomach knotted at the plaintive note in her always-so-confident sister’s voice.

  The silence that ensued was evidence of how seldom Leah asked for anything for herself. Or maybe it was the shock King experienced at being called “Daddy.”

  Finally he said, “I’m working on something that might solve the problem. It’s taking longer than I thought.”

  “I don’t want to leave Kingdom Come,” Leah said. “This is my home. I thought—”

  Leah cut herself off, but it was obvious to Eve that her eldest sister had planned to live and work on the ranch the rest of her life.

  Eve heard a choked-back sob before her father cleared his throat and said, “Here. Take my handkerchief.”

  “One handkerchief won’t do the job,” Leah said bitterly. “I have a lot more tears to cry if you can’t fix this.”

  Eve heard Leah’s boots crossing the hardwood floor of her father’s study and slipped away before she could get caught. The next day, when Matt took over operations on the ranch, it was clear that even Leah’s rarer-than-rubies tears had not convinced King to change his mind.

  Since Matt’s arrival Leah had continued her role as surrogate mother, devoted sister, and ranch manager as though her world had not been turned upside down. She treated Matt and his children with courtesy, if not warmth, and made them comfortable in a home that would soon no longer be her own. But her attitude toward their father wasn’t just frosty, it was glacial.

  For his part, King seemed to revel in his role as patriarch, presiding over a supper table that now included his long-lost son. “What are Taylor
and Victoria up to?” he asked Leah.

  “You mean since you told them you’re throwing them out of house and home?” Leah said. “I wouldn’t know.”

  Eve wondered what Matt and his kids thought when they heard the suppressed rage in Leah’s voice. She glanced toward their end of the table and realized that none of them were paying any attention to King and Leah. Pippa was shooting dark glances at her father over the head of Nathan, who seemed oblivious to the sparks flying between father and daughter.

  What had surprised Eve about her sister’s response to King regarding the whereabouts of Taylor and Victoria was not the resentment in her voice but the blatant lie. Whether they were traveling or home in Jackson, Leah always stayed in touch with her siblings. That hadn’t changed since Matt’s arrival. Eve wondered what Taylor and Victoria were up to that Leah wanted to conceal from King.

  Eve realized that she had no idea where her sisters had gone. With any luck they were off figuring out a way to make Matt’s life in Wyoming hellish enough that he’d be on the next plane back to Australia.

  “I found a herd of what appear to be wild mustangs in the north pasture,” Matt said. “Who do I call to have them moved off the ranch?”

  Eve was out of her seat before Matt had finished speaking. “Those are my horses! They’re staying right where they are.”

  Matt’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing with a herd of mustangs?”

  “Saving them from becoming dog food.”

  “I need that land for quarter horse breeding stock I’ve bought. You’ll have to move your animals.”

  Eve felt a surge of panic. “Move them where?”

  “I don’t care. I just want them gone.”

  She looked to her father for support. “Daddy? Are you going to let him do that?”

  “Matt can’t very well run the ranch if he can’t make decisions about how to use the land.”

  “You said the ranch wasn’t his for a year. He’s acting like he already owns it!”